Internet Censorship – A fix for a non existent problem

There was an article published in Australian IT, located here: http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23021828-15306,00.html

Essentially, the author claims that filters are ‘needed’ to battle child pornography.

I disagree, it is not filters that will stop the distribution of child pornography, and it is not filters that will protect children from finding inappropriate content.

Filters will simply not do the job. I wrote a post a while ago, about my quick search to find security information for an Apple Airport, and well, my search terms were not the best, using “airport +security”.

You can imagine what combinations of words, in a very innocent manner, could return inappropriate results.

What are we to do there? Filter it anyway, and just have a limited internet? That’s not within the idea of the internet to start with!

What about the encryption and P2P technologies? What will they do to stop the spread of porn there? How will they filter it without slowing the internet to a complete crawl, making a mockery of their plans for FTTN anyway. If every ISP has to filter every single packet, you can bet that processing time will add considerable speed reductions to a connection.

And since when did an ISP become a supplier of ‘content’, and not one of ‘connectivity’? I know when I go to an ISP, I’m asking for connection to bandwidth, hopefully with some also connected internationally, and at some cheap rates.

I’m not asking them to protect my eyes and give me content that should be appropriate for my viewing.

That’s the bigger issue with this porn filtering crap the Rudd government has tried to use to gain the popularity vote.

Anyone who is buying into it, really needs to do their research, because the filters, they’ll only ever really filter the standard port 80 HTTP access, which still means MSN, Skype, P2P, HTTPS, Email, etc. All wide open to pornsters to manipulate.

And, well, look what happens when you make drugs illegal? People find ways to work around it, or even do the crime underground, and commit further crimes to fuel that criminal habit.

This online filtering system needs to be binned right now, and be highlighted as the Rudd government’s first failed election promise, because purely, it’s a stupid promise, and one that they used simply to gain the uninformed vote. Stupid uninformed people, not that I blame you though.

The secret to protecting children from porn? Do your job as a parent and watch them. Simple isn’t it? You have kids, you have a inherent job to watch them, monitor them, educate them, and protect them.

If they are doing something inappropriate, they need further education on why its inappropriate. They most certainly do NOT need an electronic babysitter.

Now, if only we could get Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy to read my blog. Maybe then, we’ll have some common sense in our government.

Of course, common sense and government just don’t go well in the same sentence, but of course, we can sit by and hope that they’ll see daylight before its too late.

Enjoy!